


Swimming in Miami

by maybeillride



Category: Free!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Angst, Architect!Haru, But when will Haru learn that he and alchohol don't mix?, Courage, M/M, Married Couple, Professor!Sousuke, Prompt Fic, Smut, Sou surprises Haru with a birthday trip to Miami, They're 45, What a good husband ;), married au, patience - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2015-04-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 04:19:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3836845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybeillride/pseuds/maybeillride
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Palm trees. Our own private white sand beach. The cutest little Art Deco hotel, you’ll die.” Sousuke trails blunt, strong fingers across the back of Haru’s other hand where it rests on the table. Traces the little roller-coaster curve of his knuckles, back and forth. Haru pulls his hand away; Sousuke is unperturbed. “You can swim all day.”</p><p>Haru shakes his head. “I can’t believe we’re going to Miami. We are such a middle-aged gay cliché.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swimming in Miami

**Author's Note:**

> Hiiii everybody! And a particularly big & warm "hi" to my fabulous prompter, Morgan, who wanted to see the following:
> 
> "For my request prompt, I am going to try and be extremely vague so you can have more room for your creativity. Fill in the numbered blanks with the characters of your choice:
> 
> _1_ takes _2_ to the beach at night to have a romantic evening of swimming, but while swimming a storm suddenly comes and the waves crash on them, and cause them to lose consciousness. Upon waking on a deserted island, _1_ finds that _2_ was hurt and won't wake up. The end is up to you."
> 
> THANK YOU for the fabulous "classic-Free" ;D idea and hope you enjoy reading as much as i enjoyed writing!

“This is your boarding call for Delta Flight 2357 New York to Miami. First class passengers and those with disabilities or small children are invited to board at Gate 13.”

Haru lowers his soy latte slowly, eyes pinned to the big man across the table with narrowed intensity, but otherwise sprawling in his chair casually, almost blasé. He was tired before, bordering on exhausted, the train ride from their apartment and boarding the plane at Narita feeling 900 years in the past. But now he’s trying to hide a new swarm of butterflies circling nervous-pleasantly in his stomach. Sousuke can’t keep his secret anymore – it’s insane that he got away with it as long as he did, actually. It’s the unavoidable moment of truth. Are they…?

His tablemate’s turquoise eyes flicker up from his magazine and his stoic look is unchanged for one beat, two … until his mouth eases into the faintest smile. The architect leans across the table and lightly hits his husband on the arm with the back of one hand, just a glance.

“Mmm-hmm. Miami.” Sousuke leans to meet him halfway, dropping his magazine and setting his reading glasses on the little table. Haru misses them – his big, almost brutish man looks so good in them, like the professor he is. But he knows Sousuke doesn’t particularly like them. Doesn’t like that he needs them, doesn’t like that that means he’s _old._ Gives Haru constant, stupid shit about it, like it’s Haru’s fault he inherited his mom’s perfect vision. Haru lifts them off the table and slides them on, tries to look intellectual.

“Oh, cut it out,” his man grouses, reaching quickly out to capture them back then just stalling out with his hand settled over Haru’s on the side of his face, totally dwarfing it. Haru blinks at him, and he eventually sighs and relents, letting Haru go slowly. Haru’s hand feels too cool when he’s gone.

“Palm trees. Our own private white sand beach. The cutest little Art Deco hotel, you’ll die.” He trails blunt, strong fingers across the back of Haru’s other hand where it rests on the table. Traces the little roller-coaster curve of his knuckles, back and forth. Haru pulls his hand away; Sousuke is unperturbed. “You can swim _all day._ ”

Haru shakes his head. “I can’t believe we’re going to _Miami._ We are such a middle-aged gay cliché.” Keeps his voice pitched very quiet.

Sousuke digs in his back pocket and returns with his smartphone. “Okay. I can change the tickets if you want. I think there’s one leaving for Akron, Ohio in a couple hours. You’ll love it –”

“ _Alright._ Miami. Spring break. STIs as far as the eye can see. Can’t wait.” He makes a show of frowning.

Sousuke reclaims his glasses off Haru’s face, taking suspicious care as he slides them off. Haru just blinks. “It’s June, Haru. I think you’re a little late.” He runs a quick fingertip under Haru’s eye – like he’s getting rid of an eyelash – and Haru tilts his head the tiniest bit as it goes, like he’s following it. “Come on. Let’s hurry up before they leave.”

***

It’s _late._

It’s late, and it’s much too bright, and WAY too loud, and so humid Haru’s drinking just breathing. He slouches, staring at the carousel as it trundles around spitting out _everyone’s_ luggage but theirs’. Next to him, Sousuke’s face looks as grim as his own feels. He has a deep crease between his thick brows; tension headache, Haru knows immediately, and the big stubborn _ass_ refused to take the meds Haru kept suggesting. The first time he tried, after the cabin pressurized, the big man turned to Haru in the window seat and declined, thanked him with a pained smile. Told him he could wait until touchdown. Haru just snorted.

The fifth time Haru tried, as college kids and businesswomen and guys with apoplectic toddlers choked the aisle dully waiting to be set free, Sousuke didn’t even turn back to acknowledge his presence. He sort of looked like King Kong, Haru thought, hunched and tired and still huge.

Haru _leaps_ forward to the carousel when he spies Sousuke’s sleek suitcase cartwheel onto the belt, hearing a surprised “Haru –” from behind him. But no one can stop him now. He is _done._ They are SO out of here and heading for a dark bed. He’s so exhausted, he’s not even bothering with a bath.

He has the luggage off and a hand on the top handle when a tight, furious voice right next to him bites, “Ex-CUSE me!” in overly-enunciated English. Haru jerks his head up, meeting the hot stare of an impeccably dressed white guy, high-end suit creased in the humidity, Bluetooth in one ear. “This is MY bag, thank you.”

Haru lets the guy shove the ID tag in his face and takes a step back, not wanting a fistfight to be his welcome to Florida. He senses the big, dark, familiar presence of his husband, easing casually in next to him and a step behind.

The guy must be intimidated, or just done, yanking the handle up and trundling away from them. His ugly voice drifts back. “ _Fucking_ foreigners, Jerry. I dunno who the fuck they think they are, coming here not even knowing the language! … Oh, some stupid Asian prick tried to take my bag…” He’s lost in the thick crowd and Haru’s grateful. A heavy hand settles on his shoulder, squeezes lightly.

Haru nods once.

***

The heavy hand is traveling, softly, over the ball of his bare shoulder, down his relaxed bicep. Abandoning his arm at the waist, spreading across – like it’s casually boasting about how damn _big_ it is – whispering over his left hip and on to the lean muscle of his upper thigh. His ring is warm, almost hot, against Haru’s skin.

It’s a very nice way to wake up, Haru admits to himself, the unfamiliar shapes in the hotel room blinking into dim dawn focus, the faint sounds of seagulls outside the open window. It’s definitely warm in the room, with no air conditioning on, but he’d insisted on opening it last night before they collapsed into the king bed, almost crazed with fatigue. Fell almost unconscious to the sigh of warm wind outside … and now awake, _so_ awake, like they’ve been sleeping 20 hours instead of four. The teasing trail of Sousuke’s soft fingertips leaves tingles along his body.

He swallows, curls a little tighter on his side. The big hand pauses like it’s waiting for further instruction. The slightest breath tickles the back of his neck.

Sousuke’s finally done waiting. The breath huffs out against his shoulder in a little laugh as he takes control of the situation.

Lips close softly on Haru’s trapezius, the junction of his neck and shoulder that’s so firm yet pliable. So threaded with nerves, singing with relaxing tension from the flight and firing with too much new sensation, as his husband _pulls_ at him, like he can’t keep away. Even, large teeth settle in too, pushing gently into the skin, and Haru _hisses,_ bites his lower lip. Wills himself to be silent. To make Sousuke work for his moans.

The big man’s shaggy, coarse hair tickles his cheek, the bed creaking minutely as he shifts in flush against Haru, moves a powerful knee in between Haru’s curled legs and wraps an arm around his waist. The overwhelming, so-familiar feeling of being _taken …_ of being so small, surrounded over and through and around by dense, warm muscle … fills Haru again, steals his speech and gets him fumbling blindly for a handful of the sheets.

“Mmmm…” Sousuke hums gently in his ear, like he knows he needs to talk for both of them, and his hand finds Haru’s cock, already hardening with this dance against his senses. Finds it … but doesn’t seem to have _any_ agenda. Just touching – those big, weirdly graceful fingertips tracing around the perimeters and the circumferences. Almost lazy in their exploration, slow, but never stopping, and Haru turns his head into his upper arm and bites to stay silent. Another laugh and then Sousuke’s mouthing methodically up his jaw … rocking heavily in between his legs, smooth thigh shifting like the most bizarrely intimate massage ever. Making those _moans_ against his skin, dumb, nonsensical, and something about a man who makes a big part of his living lecturing in front of hundreds of people, something about hearing him reduced to these soft animal sounds…

Haru can’t do it. He’s lifting off his own arm with a feathery gasp and the lips against his ear growl “…gotcha,” and the teasing fingertips on his erection are a powerful fist. The rocking thigh between his legs is a hot, hard cock, fitted in his crevice as Sousuke moves them, as he sneaks his other arm under Haru to pull his chest tightly into his own. The mattress shifts in an increasing tempo and their pants catch up to and pass each other, Haru’s light and fast one outpacing Sousuke’s low gusts, his breath hot on Haru’s cheek.

When Haru comes back to himself after his orgasm, trembling, he dumbly releases his almost panicked hold on Sousuke’s hand, spread against his chest. Sousuke’s heavy over him, resting his head on Haru’s, his hand stilled. They just breathe for a few minutes, as a small-engine plane passes by outside.

Sousuke huffs a laugh, eventually, idly playing with Haru’s softening dick. Haru slaps at his hand.

“ _Excuse_ you. It’s not a _toy.”_

That gets Sousuke _guffawing,_ rolling them suddenly so he’s on his back and Haru’s resting on top of him. Big arms squeeze him fiercely as the barrel chest under him shakes with Sousuke’s laughter. Haru thinks he should probably be mad. He decides he’s too damn comfortable to care.

“Says you. Best toy I’ve ever had,” he rumbles, with this obnoxious smug tone he knows drives Haru quietly crazy. Haru’s darting a hand with the speed and precision of an attacking rattlesnake and grabbing a hold of Sousuke’s dick, thick and still relaxing in his fist. “– hey!” his man gasps out.

Haru moves up and down in calculating assessment. Sousuke lets him, the little twitch of his hip flexors giving him away. Satisfied, he pulls away and swings his legs off the bed, pulling his arms into a delicious stretch straight above his head with his head tipped back in simple pleasure. Holds it for a few wonderful beats.

Sousuke is having none of it. “So?? What?”

Haru cocks his head over one shoulder and raises a brow. His big brute is flushed, irritated, turned-on, splayed solidly on the sheets like the most shameless Japanese centerfold ever. And all Haru’s.

“I feel bad for you,” Haru says calmly over his shoulder. “I got a _way_ better toy. And I can’t even share.”

Sousuke yanks him back down.

***

The bartender is _hot –_ hot, and friendly, genuinely friendly to them, from the first moment he lays eyes on them sliding onto two cushy decadent stools. He’s speaking English, but he isn’t yelling like people always seem to want to do to them … just going clearly and slowly enough so they easily catch every word, not so slow they look like idiots. Haru blushes hard and can’t even answer him, and he hardly knows why. It’s something to do with the lush heat of the night air twirling around the ceiling fans, pushing in off the open patio, and with the fact that he doesn’t generally drink and here he is, _drinking,_ something that should be too sweet but tastes so damn good tonight. Something about the bright look in the bartender’s dark eyes as he looks at them, as he keeps coming back to chat whenever he finishes another order, leaning on his elbows in his crisp peach shirt.

Something about the heat of Sousuke’s arm around the high-back of his stool, resting protectively and maybe possessively.

“So…! Here to celebrate a birthday, huh?” The hot-nice bartender flips a white towel onto his shoulder. “What a great place to do it. I commend your vacation planning skills.”

Sousuke laughs and leans into the bar, comfortably; Haru isn’t sure how many his man’s had, he’s lost count, but he knows he can hold his liquor without a problem. Makes it look so easy. Haru sorta hates him for it but also can’t hate this big beautiful _muscle-man_ next to him. Who’s somehow all his. Through some fucking mystery – how did this big confident guy end up with _Haru,_ all those years back?

Sousuke’s rich, deep voice is talking and Haru forces himself to follow. “Thanks, man!” He reaches out and offers the bartender a fist to bump, and Haru’s giggling helplessly as the hot-nice guy obliges him. They look at him with amusement.

“Whoa-oh! Looks like birthday-boy here may be at his limit, for the moment,” the dark-haired guy says, grinning at Sousuke, twinkling at Haru. Haru’s mad – and he’s not – and he lifts his tall icy glass and the sweetness tastes like relief.

“Yeah.” Sousuke’s staring at him now, such close range he wants to tell him to fuck off for being so _rude,_ but that isn’t something you say to your husband, is it? Your _husband,_ who brought you all the way to _Miami_ for your 45th birthday… “We’ve been married 20 years. Can you believe that??” He’s smiling at Haru, big and dumb, and Haru just wants to tell him to quit it. To stop saying such embarrassing stuff, telling this hot-nice bartender how _old_ he is…! But Sousuke’s eyes are doing this thing, this sort of sparkling-stare, and Haru forgets how to talk again.

“Ahh!! Wow, congratulations, guys!” He leans over and claps them both on the shoulders and now _his_ eyes are doing the sparkling thing and Haru looks away, hard. “That’s awesome! And when, what, two-thirds or whatever of marriages end in divorce? Dang, you could teach us straight guys something, huh?”

“It’s all Haru. I’ve fucked our thing up so many ways but he always knows how to fix it.” Sousuke pulls Haru’s face around to him and Haru’s blinking – he’s so close, his familiar face pink with drink and he’s kissing Haru, firmly, in front of the hot-nice-straight guy. In front of _everyone._

And Haru’s turning away on his spinny stool, a sliver of Sousuke’s face dumb with surprise as it flicks past, and stumbling out of the bar, across the big open patio, bypassing the pool. Hearing Sousuke calling his name but just floating on, staggering on, hardly registering the snap-flash of distant lightning. He pushes numbly through the pool gate that gives onto the little path, the one they walked earlier today hand-in-hand on their way back from the beach, dazed with too much sun and not talking and dusted with the fine white sand that’s just as pretty as Sousuke promised.

Sand so soft under his bare feet as he floats on, somehow, crossing the beach that’s so bright, popping against the inky sky. He has his slouchy soft cover-up off, his jeans, without knowing how, the Gulf water so warm lapping his ankles as he splashes in and dives under.

….finally… finally, the water surrounding him is perfectly quiet, so _warm,_ it should be TOO warm but just feels soft on his bare chest, as he finally comes up and starts stroking, stroking, blind, just knowing the movement is comforting, is so familiar. He hardly notices as the surface begins to rise and fall, slow at first, then stronger, like he’s a bathtoy in a giant’s tub, he dimly registers the snap of sharp light as he yanks his head up to breathe…. He’s just where he should be, doing what he should do –

A hand, PULLING him back by the ankle so hard an ocean of water rushes his mouth, his nose, he’s spluttering and struggling as he drops into a tread without thought. Hands, on his shoulders, _twirling_ him – and Sousuke’s there, and his face is so _terrified_ and Haru has no idea why, and the big strong hands on Haru’s shoulders relax as his man’s head slips down, down under the violent water.

 _Sousuke!_ he screams in his mind, and he’s _gone,_ his husband is GONE, it’s just an eerie heaving blue in front of him, the sudden wind whipping his hair away from his frantic face. Gone, gone, gone, Haru’s _down,_ diving like a bullet arms out sweeping in front of him for something, anything…

Gone – all _his FAULT –_ his chest is _pounding_ –

It’s deep – it’s _too_ deep when his wrist hits something solid, his hand scrabbling in the black until it can close around something soft, and he gets a panicky grip and turns back, kicks and kicks and kicks –

Haru’s head shoots up, the heavy weight continuing after him and Sousuke’s head following, Haru’s hand knotted in his hair. His face is still – too still – eyes closed, mouth ajar, pale in the light from the sky, and Haru seizes him, rolls onto his back and clutches him to his chest. His arms and shoulders tremble madly with the whole-body effort to _keep this man up,_ keep his face free of the water, the waves churning and battering them and Sousuke’s dead weight shoving him down like a hand. He glues his face into his man’s shoulder and gasps and spits every time he’s swamped and shakes and _holds him up –_

….and just – grays – _out._

_***_

It’s … it’s the _ache_ Haru’s slammed with when he comes back to himself. Just … every joint in his body, like they’ve been pulled apart, out of socket, filled with napalm and set on fire. He moans, and the sound is so rough, so dry and _dead,_ it scares him and his eyes shoot open like old-fashioned windowshades.

It’s dark – but an almost-full moon hovers overhead, so low and close Haru just blinks up at it. He’s flat on his back, rough sand and gravel and broken shells grating into him, feet tickled by insistent seafoam advancing and receding. His arms ache worst of all, locked into place … around Sousuke, a lifeless weight across his chest, arms splayed to either side, head lolled away from Haru –

_Sousuke – !_

Haru’s gasping, easing out from under him as gently as he can, the harsh scrum of this unknown beach pulling and ripping at his back and stabbing him with pain – but he hardly notices, hovering over the dead-calm form of his husband. Nothing. Not a single flicker of movement anywhere, in his slack face, his curled fingers, splayed body. Haru drops his head to the barrel chest he knows so well, knows better than his own, has rested on _just like THIS –_

The roar in his ears mutes all else and he waits, clutching the too-cold ribcage below him and just _breathes …_ and two breaths, three, four, the smooth curves of his man’s pecs regain their sharp edges, their solidity. He can hear again. He can listen. He holds his head still and waits …

…and there, deep, like it’s drifting up from underwater, the ponderous thud of his heart – and it’s slow, it’s _too slow,_ but it’s there and Haru almost greys-out again in a wave of relief.

He abandons Sousuke’s heart, lurches for his head, sidesteps instantly through memory and he’s back, back at the Iwatobi Swim Club, he’s 16 and he’s at lifeguard training, they’re scattered around a conference room and guys are laughing around him, fake-kissing the CPR dummies and trying to get the girls to laugh…

But Haru, Haru’s not goofing off, he’s utterly focused on the rubber torso below, on the task at hand – because this is the water, and he knows the water, and people can die in the water, and he needs to know how to save them.

And the years collide like a fan folding together, as Haru ducks down in the classroom and on the beach and gets close, so close he’s right against the still face …

...a hot breath stutters out and tickles his cheek. His heart surges.

He shoves back, hurts his elbows as he digs in, grabs the cold slanted cheeks in his hands. Burns a vicious stare down like the force of his eyes will be enough to wake Sousuke up. Nothing. Of course.

“Sousuke – !” he whispers, and the panic in his voice scares him almost as much as the man’s stillness. “Come on! Get up!” He pats the cheeks rapidly, pinches Sousuke’s earlobe, _hard._ The face stays still, and it’s the deadness of him – the total lack of any animation, any spark – that scares Haru most. Sousuke’s _never_ expressionless, even when he’s trying to be. He’s just too full of his peculiar dark energy, sarcasm, restlessness.

This is not Sousuke. This is something … empty.

“Goddammit, Sou,” Haru spits, and his breath strangles high up in his throat, and his eyes are ridged with scalding tears … and he can’t speak, his mouth welded shut against his sobs, squeezing the dead head beneath him and lowering his own head. Resting on Sousuke’s cold shoulder.

Colliding with _another_ memory, being here, on this shoulder, Sousuke having slowly pulled his own wedding suit off in charcoal-black, then turning to him with such … anticipation and getting rid of Haru’s in all-white. Surrounding him in his arms and just collapsing back onto the hotel bed, sliding a hand into Haru’s hair as he rested lazily on his new husband’s shoulder. And Haru playing with Sousuke’s other hand on the bed, tickling the palm and making him laugh, thinking _my hand is so small, compared to his … what the hell is this guy doing with someone like me?_

Haru’s up, then, shoving violently back and almost overbalancing and falling on his ass – or worse, his head. He hops back a few steps on the jagged beach until he’s sure he won’t fall, then flicks his gaze to the water –

– to find nothing. Just a flat, empty expanse of moonlight that would be gorgeous if they were back on their little private beach, snuggled together, cozy in their soft post-swim clothes. He can practically _SEE_ them across the water, some unknown kilometers away, smiling dreamily out at the little speck of land way out on the horizon. At the little _deserted island._

Haru’s lurching off, down the narrow beach, heart hammering, _don’t walk around the whole thing don’t walk around the whole thing don’t –_

It takes him maybe five minutes to make it all the way around and back to Sousuke, the whole thing featureless and flat and scrubby and covered in useless bushes and trees and without a single living thing, human or animal. He isn’t even sure where Miami is glowing against the sky; the giant moon is stealing the color away, robbing him of any direction.

And Sousuke hasn’t moved at all.

Haru feels it when his hope goes. It isn’t gradual, it doesn’t bleed out of him like dry rice from a bag with a hole, sucking away until he’s withered and done. It _pops_ off, like an old incandescent lightbulb dying when you flick the switch. It’s just, gone.

Because Sousuke is going to die. He’s dying right now, he’s maybe in there somewhere but he’s turning and twisting away, this brilliant, brooding, darkly funny, confident, brash man, who never leaves Haru alone, who fell like a ton of bricks into the seat next to Haru’s his first day at Tokyo U, leaning to murmur “…no one should sit in fucking Rocks for Jocks alone” in his ear and filling Haru with silent shivers.

This man who is not for real, who is unlike every other person on this Earth, who ties Haru’s tongue in angry knots and makes him want to say and do _so much –_ and just leaves him turning away, dignity out the window, rolling his eyes at his familiar laughter.

The man he knows as well as himself, maybe better, who dives in after Haru as much as Haru tries to dive off on his own. Like a big shadow. Not even looking for anything back … just pulled, compelled to follow like Haru’s shooting off some magnetic field and Sousuke’s helpless to get away. Even when it hurts him. Even when he drowns.

Haru’s legs quietly fold, then, he doesn’t faint or collapse but rather goes down with a weird lack of drama, leaving him spread out across Sousuke like the big man is a human mattress. The night is mild, the air almost uncannily still; but they’re almost naked, Haru in jammers and Sousuke in a pair of briefs, he’d stripped to throw himself into the water and catch up to Haru as he paddled drunkenly away. Churned through the water to find him, to catch up to him before he passed out or worse – and it’s just the most perfect cosmic irony for fate to switch their nights. For Haru to somehow get through unscathed, for Sousuke to swim into a fatal error – a wrench of his old shoulder injury, maybe, or just a simple stomach cramp or Charley horse.

For Haru’s inability to be _normal_ to end up killing this big improbable man he loves.

He dully pulls Sousuke’s splayed arms in, curls them against his chest under him, tries to cover as much of his man’s exposed skin as he can. Sousuke’s face, though; Haru is pulled under by an exhaustion so complete his head snaps forward on his neck, but he can’t rest, can’t bring himself to took away from the silent face of the stranger below him. If he does, he may miss something, some twitch or even Sousuke opening his eyes, and he can’t quit now.

So he blinks heavily, and the face doubles, triples, blurs into incoherence.

***

The distant buzz of a small-engine plane jolts Haru awake.

He’s dreaming, he’s gone back a day and he’s reliving yesterday’s lazy morning sex, his brain looking for _anything_ to comfort him as he lies on this cold body.

But he’s wrong, it’s no memory, it’s REAL and Haru’s launching himself straight back again, splashing hard into the water when he can’t stop. The engine drones closer.

And Haru’s leaping up and down in the shallow water, kicking a wet explosion everywhere, frantically waving his arms and darting a glance around the dawn sky. Nothing. And –

…a seaplane drifts into view from out of his line of vision, easily cutting across the sky, and it’s the most amazing thing Haru’s ever seen in his life. And he’s an insane tornado, trying to get the plane’s attention, _screaming_ up though he sees the little enclosed cockpit and there’s no way in fucking hell they can hear him.

“HELP! I NEED HELP! PLEASE! PLEASE HELP ME!”

…and it’s happening, the improbable, the _impossible is actually happening,_ the t-shape of the plane’s underside winks sunlight in his eyes as the seaplane gracefully draws a huge circle in the sky. Turns slowly back to them, dropping down to the smooth surface like a crane coming in for a landing.

And Haru’s dropping down too, legs giving out and sitting heavily with a shock that travels all the way up his spine. Turning and dropping bonelessly down…

…to rest his swimming head on Sousuke’s chest…

…to hear the distant, stubborn beat of his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> WHOA WHOA I CAN'T DO ANYTHING W/O GOOFY HARU ANGST AND SHOVING SOUHARU IN THERE AND HOPE YOU FORGIVE ME DEAR ~ 
> 
> A giant acknowledgement to demfeeeels, who got me thinking about what SouHaru might be like middle-aged-married, and to LoveKSB, who kept badgering me to try exploring their dynamic from a character-driven, opposites-attract approach instead of a plot-driven approach (something mastered by some very talented peeps here including Daxii, peekapika, and omgimwritingfanfics, to name only a few). 
> 
> It was actually particularly fun to strip everyone else from this AU as another experiment - Rin, Mako, Nagi and Rei and the gang may not exist here, which as usual turns these guys into very different people. Namely, Haru's even more withdrawn and rigid and Sou turns out looser and more playful (for the most part), which was pretty fun ;D
> 
> Bonus points to anyone who can name the title reference! And thank you as always for reading <3


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